The Games began two weeks ago with a declaration by organisers that this year's event was the "the first social media Olympics", and from the millions of comments and photos posted on social networking sites, they were not wrong.

More than 150 million tweets about the Olympics were posted during the 16 days, and about 80,000 per minute published after Usain Bolt won the gold medal in the 200m final, Twitter said.

On Facebook, US gymnast Gabby Douglas grew her fan base the most - from 14,358 to 582,912 fans over two weeks, social marketing firm Wildfire said.

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The explosion of social media commentary around the Games was both boon and bane to organisers, athletes, marketers and fans. Here are some of the incidents:

*Twitter abuse

The arrest of a 17-year-old over abusive tweets he sent to British diver Tom Daley shed light on the darker side of social media. The boy, who is on bail to return to court in November, sent Daley the message "you let your dad down i hope you know that", which the diver retweeted to his 1.5 million followers with the note: "After giving it my all...you get idiot's sending me this." Daley's father died of cancer last year. The boy also sent other tweets to the teen diver, but Dorset police did not say which of the tweet or tweets prompted them to arrest him "on suspicion of malicious communications".

The arrest prompted discussion in the UK over whether trolls should be ignored or punished. In Australia, another teen's criticism, this time of swimmer Emily Seebohm, sparked strong comments from Seebohm's brother Tom, who wrote that the girl was ugly. Seebohm had also spoken about her obsession with social media and how it may have played a role in her silver-medal performance in the 100m backstroke final.

*IOC restrictions

Social media was also the focus of protests by US Olympians over what they said were unfair restrictions on what they could post online about their personal sponsors. Under Olympic rules, only official sponsors such as Adidas, Visa and Coca-Cola could be promoted, with revenue from the sponsorship deals going to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). But the athletes claimed such restrictions would limit their earnings from personal sponsors.

The protest was described by the chief executive of sports management company Premier Management Group, Evan Morgenstein, as the "biggest nightmare" for the IOC.

"Social media has done the one thing they never expected," Mr Morgenstein told Wired magazine. "It gave athletes from all over the world the ability to communicate. That's got to keep them up at night."

*Facebook competition cancellation

Procter & Gamble, one of the Games' official sponsors, ran an "Olympics cheer" video contest for Facebook fans of Vicks Australia, but cancelled the prize of a trip to London after citing voting irregularities. A P&G spokeswoman said "our website could not distinguish whether votes had been gained through unsportsmanlike means, for example, bought, or paid for through voting websites".

But the winner of the competition, Catherine Pitt, and other competitors said they were given mixed messages from the company's representatives over how they were allowed to collect votes for their competition entries. Several competitors criticised the company on its Facebook page, reflecting the difficulties large corporations - from Channel Seven to Target - have had when dealing with users' comments on the social networking site.

*Reporter locked out over #nbcfail tweet

A British newspaper reporter was removed from Twitter and then reinstated following an outcry after he posted a tweet that was critical of US network NBC's Olympic coverage and included the email address of one of the company's executive.

The removal by the social networking giant, which was criticised by other Twitter users, raised questions about the neutrality of the site and what it would do for business partners such as NBC.

"If there's even the suggestion that Twitter might choose to enforce its standards more assiduously for people who criticise its business partners, what happens when the growing company develops business interests in, say, a country whose government is under protest?" Time magazine asked.

The social media experience was not all negative. Athletes reached out to their fans in an unprecedented way, tweeting about their life in the Olympic village, posted images of their medals, and - for Bolt - campaigning for a trial at his favourite football team Manchester United.

@usainbolt if you want that trial at Man Utd shout me, I'll speak to the boss!! Well done in 100m, waiting for you to smash the 200m now!